The following are reader's opinions of the USS Enterprise-E made by Bandai.

Reviewer

Alex Pritchard

Date Reviewed

May 19, 2004

Overall Rating

Average. Get it if on sale or you love the subject.

Comments

This kit is about 1/16th inch away from being worth 4 stars. I'll explain in a moment.

First let me say that unlike others, I was lucky enough not to get a large gap where the engineering section mates with the saucer. There's a fractional gap however - starboard side too, I wonder what keeps causing these?

In fact, my kit went together OK until the absolute final moment. The stand will not slide far enough onto the completed ship to reach the contacts to make the lights work. I can see that the inner section that it slides on to is either too deep, or the outer section is not fastened down enough. I didn't screw the screw in tight at all, and in spite of squeezing etc. I can't resolve the situation at all at this time. It just appears to be one poor fit that's spoiling the whole thing. If I get desperate I could fashion a 1/4 inch extra contact for both positive and negative because the stand does at least go on far enough for it to be stable but that would be fiddly and really quite annoying.

This kit is a great idea executed rather badly by Bandai. The nacelle construction is very poor design. You have to put a lot of force on the wires to make them fit and the foil that is supposed to hold the wires in place becomes a complete joke when the time comes to slide the nacelle halves together. I was quite amazed to see that a sticker would hide the wires from external sight as well. This is very poor.

The wiring of the secondary hull is also a bit of a pain, I would re-write steps 14 and 15 to provide a lot more information. This is a shame because the rest of the instructions are really very clear.

If just a couple of things about this kit were changed it would become brilliant. The overall finish is very good and I'm pleased with the way she looks. It just needs a few more pre-assemblies from Bandai because the kit can be ruined by just one thing not being able to go together right. I HATE screwing screws into plastic! I think for the price they want to charge you for this kit, it could and should be a lot better.

Because of this, I will not be buying another Bandai kit unless I see one heavily discounted.